


Never Told

by Anonymous



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dark, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26597350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: This was written in 2015.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3
Collections: Anonymous





	Never Told

Nobody ever tells you about what really happens after the Games. Nobody ever tells you how to deal with it.

After leaving the arena, your life changes forever. And not in a good way. You become a puppet that gets poked and prodded and placed wherever your master sees fit. They change you.

_Physically._

  
_Mentally._

  
_Emotionally._

  
Sleep is but a thing you wished existed. You wake up nightly, drenched in sweat, screaming and clawing at the sheets that drown you. Night and day become horrific flashbacks. The smell of blood stings your nose. The sight of an unnaturally colored corpse looking at you with dead eyes. They were previously alive, staring you down with viciousness, wanting to kill you just as much as your want to kill them. Needing to kill you as much as you need to kill them. Then you see your ax in their chest, and know that it is over. You know that you killed someone just as innocent as you. Someone just as misfortunate to be reaped.

After you have been subject to prostitution to please bourgeois politicians and higher-ups, you learn to no longer feel attachment. You want to. Oh, how you wish you could feel pure human attachment like you used to before the Games shut you down. You want to feel the touch of another person and feel warmth instead of ice. The shudder never goes away. After you deny the man who now controls your life, you watch everything around you burn.

_Your friends._

  
_Your house._

  
_Your family._

  
You fall to your knees in front of the burning building, screaming until your vocal chords give out completely. Crying until there is nothing left inside. Heaving air until you pass out then wake up in your house in the Victor’s Village. Alone. And panic races through you and weighs you down, making you static. Your mother and father and siblings are gone. No more inviting them over to play games or family dinners at the oversized house provided by the Capitol. So you burn the house down. If they burn yours down, why not burn theirs? After all, Victors never play according to the rules.

After you have watched countless tributes become slaughtered under your advising, you become numb. Reapings are annual occurrences that no longer hold pain, mostly because you have learned to block out its consistency. You look out at the crowd, seeing rows of innocent children fidgeting with their clothes, hoping they don’t get picked. The two that do, you see the fear in their faces. Their families say goodbye inside and you get a sharp memory of saying goodbye to your family the day you got reaped. Then you remember not getting to say goodbye as they burned to the ground.

  
But, you try to help the two children before you. You warn them of what will happen but you don’t get their hopes up. Every night you go to bed, the nightmares stronger because it is this time of year again and that means another anniversary of you managing to not be one of the twenty-three dead tributes from your Games. When your District’s tributes go into the arena, you watch on the televisions as they die. And you shake your head, walking away from the other mentors, your body begging for an excessive amount of alcohol and sex to numb the pain. Being a mentor only adds to your killing statistics.

  
Then there is one year that sets the pendulum swinging. A girl in Twelve volunteers for her sister. She is paired with baker’s boy. You grin and shake your head. At least your tributes would last longer than this unlikely pair. But you are wrong in the end. The painstakingly fake love act works on the Capitol and they both survive. The other mentors in the room are just as confused. How can there be two Victors?

After you get reaped a second time, you get pissed off. These people never wanted to protect you. These people already provide false comfort towards those they want as commodities. You have put up a barrier though and have shown that you do not want to associate with them. You have used your sexuality and strength to make them fear you. To remind them that you are a killer and that there is always room to kill more. Hours are spent in the training center, refining your fighting skills. Watching others and finding weaknesses. You are approached by fellow mentors and Victors. There is an alliance forming. A rebellion. You agree because if there is one thing you want to see, it is yourself getting revenge. And soon, it is time to enter the arena. Keep the Mockingjay safe. Bring her the two allies. That is your job and failing is not an option. Every cannon you hear, you hope it is not the one person who will lead the rebellion.

After you get tortured in the Capitol, you begin to question your life. You develop the worst anxiety. Hair shaven off. Beaten until you could no longer stand. Shocked with electricity. You do not speak. Drenched with water. You do not speak. Shocked with electricity. You will not speak. They keep a continuous water torture. It slowly drips into your cell.

_Drip._

  
_Drip._

  
_Drip._

  
_Shock._

  
Your body withers in pain. You want to scream but that is not the strong thing to do. You do not scream. You do not speak. You do not make a noise. But you hear others screaming. That is not what you will do though. You are unlike everyone else. If they killed you now it would not matter. There was no one left to return to. Your district was likely destroyed. Your family had been long gone. The rebellion made it clear that they only needed you for the Quarter Quell. They electrocute you over and over again and still not a sound ruptures from you. Energy pulses through your stiffened body until you could feel the lightness of death creeping in. No more energy. Heaviness from exhaustion and pain reenter your body. It is starting to feel like part of the torture was being teased with death, an escape you had no control over. You had no control at all. Until one day when the electricity goes out and you wake up no longer in a cell.

After the Rebellion saves you, you still wonder why you exist. They don’t need you anymore. They act like you are worth their time but you are not. You are just another expense. You lash out more than you used to. Remember the days when you were a pleasant child? They are long gone. This is you now.

  
_Pissed off._

  
_Vengeful._

  
_Filled with pain._

  
The morphling feels good, though. It numbs every corner. It sends you into a temporary bliss. That is, until it starts wearing off and then you are worse off than before. The withdrawals make your body twist in pain. The acid in your throat burns as your body refuses everything you put in it. You are uncomfortably thin. Skin and bones. No more muscle. All sinew. Fragile is but another adjective.

After one person finally starts to care, you feel safer but safety is a thin rope you walk. They hold you at night. You return the favor. They pull you up when you fall down during training. But they are selfish and you know it. The attention is nice though. Having someone warm and alive next to you is reassuring. They help you regain footing. But in the end it is useless. In the end you end up failing once more. You drown and lose yourself once more. Back to the morphling you go. Back to the temporary highs before you feel yourself plummet in between. Back and forth. Back and forth. Like a fucking pendulum. A movement that will never stop.

After the person responsible for your suffering dies, things do not magically return to normal again. Your family is still gone. Your house is still a pile of ash. Your mind is still fucked by nightmares and visions. Being a Victor never stops and it never slows down. Your life is a war and every day is a battle. Everything around you has calmed down. Everything is being fixed except yourself. There is no help for you because everyone else is worried for their own self or has someone else to worry over.

  
No one cares to check on you. You are expected to be the strongest one left. No one understands that your anger is a plea for help. That is all you ever feel and it is not your fault. You remind yourself every day that this life is not your fault.

Because no one ever tells you what happens after you win the Games, and no one ever tells you how to deal with it.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in 2015.


End file.
